In The Foreshadow
by Dobermann Dru
Summary: World War Two. Selene, Amelia and Nazi experiments. Sort of inspired by the advert for 'Worst Case Scenario'. Story now continuing, again!
1. Chapter 1

Dealing death.  
  
It was what they did. Was what she did. Felt, at times, as though it was all she ever would do.  
  
That and mourn the living state of a slumbering death more inanimate than most her kind willingly endured. A literal tomb, composed of stone and metal. Giant, imposing concrete slabs, pillars and steel to surround the one that had given both purpose and a new life.  
  
New life from death. That was the way.  
  
At peace be well, Viktor, echoed the thought. At peace be well...  
  
"Selene."  
  
That was a voice far more unbidden. One that, to the recipient, held little care or fairly symbolised warmth. It was one of several things that hardened her, like a crab, impervious to what the outside world of her emotional shell might have her believe, say or do.  
  
"Selene."  
  
And then cold eyes stared that way. She didn't ignore. Just at times didn't think it worth the effort to dignify such beckonings. Far too many times had they who said it managed to steer the conversation round to less welcome topics, or presumptions of how she was. Who she was.  
  
"Kraven," answered demure vampiress. Or at least, that was how he liked to think of her. Demure. But her veering away was not through shyness. Daughter to a regal legacy, perhaps, but it made her no more a stranger to what those could do who violated boundaries to... Violate other things as well. So she remained ice. Not the dark fire he little doubt imagined her to be, though true it could be. But not for him. Ice. The fire was hers and hers to be controlled alone. A pale face looking up in only formal respect. "What is it?"  
  
Yet it didn't stop him hiding a smile. The girl, Viktor's dirty laundry, so to speak, looking at him with that defiant glint in a stare. It annoyed, for sure, but there was that part of a vampire that kicked and scratched. And what a day it could be when she would scratch. Bite. Scream the name of the one who finally got to win her.  
  
And then he'd tell her exactly what her dear daddy had really done. Or Kraven liked to think that he would. It was a subject of endless mental debate. But would it forever turn her really against him? It was an Ace card. A final resort.  
  
"Your father's successor," continued he, with a wry observation. It helped to remind her. Viktor wasn't around. A sleeping fossil. Somebody else had replaced the old bat and, in time, another would for they. And every King needs a Queen and every Princess, like Selene, in truth knows they need a suitor some day. "We might be out of the way of things. But where she's going to won't be."  
  
Selene only rose brow. A visual signal to elaborate, but his mind savoured it. Would remember the visual for later on. For a time when it would be just him, a bed and hands, to imagine her on that same bed, expressing same, but with a very different implied meaning.  
  
"Germany. Amelia needs an escort, you need to stop dwelling and besides which, your name was personally requested. It's the perfect opportunity."  
  
Or excuse, she thought. After all, a shark doesn't hunt a school of fish. It seperates them. And that, no doubt, would be the game: Keep her mind off Viktor. Keep it on him instead, as though there was any alternative the way he strutted round by her every night.  
  
"What?" Enquired Kraven. Not a harsh tone. Just an interested one at the perceived expression. "Does everything has to be plots and schemes behind the curtain?"  
  
"That's our nature, isn't it?"  
  
"It's not your nature."  
  
"No." And how she hated it when he did that. Let his eyes slowly roam, down, then up. To assume that he could own her in gaze if nothing else. "I just kill things."  
  
"Ouch...!" And it was nothing but mockery that spilled from his mouth. Two hands clasped over unliving heart, as though she had staked it herself. Perhaps if he had known the thoughts going through that head, such a thing shouldn't have even been tempted. In play or not. "Selene... You wound me!"  
  
"Not yet I haven't."  
  
But it wasn't a game she was interested in. A twirl round, in private dreading the thought of him 'incidentally' stumbling forward to like a zombie to catch hold of her for balance after that. The doors to Viktor's resting place cycling back to deny witness of it as she did so. Kraven could follow. For he always did.  
  
"It's not my fault." Viktor's yesteryear champion retorted. "You know security's spread thinner these days. Blame the humans and their little war."  
  
"Mmm, the war," Selene agreed. Eyes on nothing else but directions to the mansion armoury, where she could at least peruse the mission profile details in private. On the job. Always. "All that running around... Shooting each other. You'd have thought it would have gone out of fashion by now."  
  
"Sarcasm as well as beauty? My-my, Selene. Any other talents you feel like demonstrating lately?"  
  
"Whether a vampire can regenerate its own genitals, if you're not careful."  
  
"So sayeth the warrior." Kraven couldn't help but smile at it. The view of Selene's rear, as he slowed and Death Dealer carried on her way, also did its bit to raise spirits just a little. "Pack what you can," he called on out. "Hopefully it won't be too long a trip..." 


	2. Chapter 2

"Those who want to live, let them fight and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."  
  
- Adolf Hitler  
  
Steam seemed to churn in the very air. The giant, blackly painted metal coffin of train, beginning to slowly pull away from the station. Steel metal plates for wheels, tractioning over the smooth rail with every exerting chuff of air, coal burning steadily away in boiler as they did so. An almost harshly reassuring sawpaper sound occuring every time the next chain reaction between water and heat occured, deep in the mechanised bowels.  
  
For Selene, like most jobs, the time had passed in relative silence. Nothing to say and no need to say it. Luggage was stowed and so, went the logic, were thoughts.  
  
"'Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless'..."  
  
Eyes blinked to attention. The focusing orbs snapping as immediately to the spoken target, as they would have done for the barrel of a gun. "I'm sorry?"  
  
"Adolf Hitler," the woman sitting across the table clarified. It had been, as it happened, among the very first things they had even said. "'Mein Kampf'. For a human, they have an marvelously ruthless way of thinking."  
  
Ah yes... The book. Selene, though not usually one for small talk with strangers, was certainly no slouch when it came to social graces. Not when it came to the matter of ruling vampiric elder. An upwards nod of acknowledgement given at that comment. "From author to commander of an empire in only a matter of years. Shakespeare would be proud."  
  
"Not every pen is mightier than the sword," observed relaxed brunette. "Or, come to that, cannon."  
  
"Or tank."  
  
"Touché..." One vampiress smiled to another, a slight bow of head with eyes kept trailed and extended hand of greeting. "I apologise for not making myself amenable before, shall we say? Selene, yes...?"  
  
Rabbit-quick glance to hand. Own contacting lightly in agreement of the supplicant hospitality.  
  
"I was most curious..."  
  
"In what exactly?"  
  
"You are Viktor's get. He favoured you dearly... I only wished to see for why - and," Amelia added with smile, "of course, to have the security of one of our more reputable lycan killers on this journey."  
  
"Yes, well," Selene's lips pursed. "There's not been too much opportunity for that lately." 'Lately' being several hundred years, if concerned with whole populated dens of them. The days of eradication were over for all but her though. There would always been at least one of them out there, some place... Waiting. To be killed. "But one must keep the dogs from our feet, where able to."  
  
"Yes. One must."  
  
Amelia had an odd way about her, even for an elder. It didn't annoy their nominated guard but, still, it was peculiar. As if they were always pondering on something. Chances were that they were doing precisely that. But that gaze of theirs was quite unsettling and, more to the point, Selene couldn't really show it. A shift of shoulders was the most she could manage for sociability. She had to play the game of uncaring, though Erika would have told her to just play along, let the elder peruse and even encourage that. For who knew what areas of promotion would lay ahead?  
  
The thing was, Selene wasn't particularly interested, unless it involved getting away from Kraven. Even less so if it meant negating duties from lycan dispatching.  
  
And at last Amelia had chosen to look away after the longest while. The feel of creeping shadow expelled by light.  
  
Selene elected not to speak for the remainder of the journey then. But the train moved on, boiler stoked and pistons greased; racing its industrialised way across countryside and urbanisation both. A fleeting monster, whose passengers feasted on blood. In the distance, little reverberating puffs of sound and each one signifying one more attempt at explosively bombing death.  
  
When the monster finally found its foreign home, it breathed its breath of heated steam and all came to a standstill. A dragon among engines with a decorative plume of smoke. A lit signal given before the cue had been taken and doors opened, figures stepping out. A file of undead guardians and entourage alike, with Selene at the head of the queue.  
  
Amelia just beside.  
  
And what do monsters do, when coming to meet so gladly?  
  
Why, they meet fellow monsters, of course.  
  
"Frau... Amelia?"  
  
A feminine smile of reply, sharp as those razored nails.  
  
"Guten tag..." 


	3. Chapter 3

"It's not my business to do justice; it's my business to annihilate and exterminate, that's all."  
  
- Göring, speech confirming his orders to the police of February 1933.  
  
"Heil Hitler!"  
  
Odd perhaps, that nouns and adjectives with the original intent to speak of relations between God and man, of salvation, eternal or else, could have been so perverted like that. But Amelia, a proverbial queen among vampires, more amused at the gesture than anything, had thought it slightly predictable. The dictator had, after all, been an adherent to Catholicism. The battles to control churches in the Reich had taken one so familiar with them to understand how to manipulate them. At least in the beginning.  
  
And there would always be a beginning.  
  
"Hmmm..." Amelia looked more like a panther about to pounce on its prey, than one who deliberated their gretting with disillusionment. And perhaps she would. "I see."  
  
Not that it appeared to dampen the Nazis' spirits for a single moment, with their pale faces and thrusted salutes of right arm. They weren't the old SA; no tiredness leading to a regard of it as too much strain and simply waving the hand. They were of a generational rank acquainted with it enough to stiffen arm at front, with a distinct possibilty of not even recognising how similar it was to Mussolini's Fascists. And Lord save them all from their chaotic little Italian friends...  
  
And "Guten tag," repeated vampiric elder again, quite possibly to derride them. She was not bound by human law and never would be, never mind Germanic origin.  
  
There would be no dictation to her of what she was or was not allowed to do, outside of practicality's realm. Just as no vampire child would have to agree to a daily study period of 'Heiling' their leader between 50 and 150 times each day.  
  
Not that it did not have an appeal.  
  
But they didn't care. They were sickeningly eager and all too predictable in their false smile. They had their way, she had her's and, eventually, the Third Reich would be the envy of all worlds, whether legendary or not. Still, Amelia did so appreciate it when the cattle didn't run.  
  
"We trust that your journey went well," greeted the ranking human among them. Skin so white they could have passed for a member of the undead on the matter of appearence alone. "Welcome to the Reich. We have been entrusted to escort yo-"  
  
But Amelia interrupted with not a spoken voice, but wave of the hand. Choosing to verbalise her announcement, only after they took heed. "I have my escort," she supplied with grace. It was with no displeasure that the disregard registered on the German's face, with just a slight loss for words. Even as she took just as much private happiness in restoring it again with her next words. For it was she who had the power. "But we will agree to ride in your... Automobiles."  
  
Selene just cast a glance in her elder's direction. Ameila knew darn well what a car was, so playing dumb was no doubt a political maneuver on her part. Or something to make the security enforcers pause for thought on just how old they could be. Either way, it could play to their advantage and leave the humans with that much less of a logical foundation to step on. to use against them.  
  
"Of course," living male relented. One more little smile, along with a light cant of head. "However you please."  
  
The Sicherheitsdienst, or SD for shortened use, were a formidable group. Umbrella of the RSHA, Reich Security Department, above them perpetually ensuring that it would be they who maintained control of all internal security of the nation in general. Still, when they wanted to be, they could be very charming and such a meeting was no exception. Several sleek, blackened cars having already been pulled up outside the station, for the transfer of individuals and luggage for the long ride ahead.  
  
"They are the ants." Amelia could be oddly up front with opinion at times, as Selene was finding out. At least, when in the confines of privacy, such as the back seat of a vehicle. "And their Führer, he puts them to work."  
  
"I'd hardly picture Hitler as their Queen."  
  
"Indeed, Selene... Indeed. More of a Nero. We've had plenty of our own and the humans are no different."  
  
"Maybe they just lack the right teeth."  
  
"And sometimes," Amelia lamented; the inertial push of gravity felt that signified the commencing of travel, "I find it an irony that in order to rise above man, we had to become one with the beast." 


End file.
